My heart sank in depression witnessing a thick layer of dust that had covered the tree leaves, the first time I visited Karachi from the greens of Islamabad in the early 80s. I remember to have never needed to brush the dust off my school shoes because there was none after having strolled through the streets of the federal capital but now my shoes required cleaning each time I returned home, even if I did so in the car. The trees in Islamabad and Lahore used to be bright green and healthy, but one wonders what went wrong in the past four decades that air pollution has enveloped urban centres in Pakistan.
Nothing transforms overnight in a consistent collective act of civic irresponsibility and indifference towards environmental degeneration where favours of nature have been taken up for granted brought us to a catch-22 situation.
The racketeering construction mafia has engulfed the agricultural lands in the name of development, the rampant deforestation and the exploits of foreign bottlers pumping out underground water are some of the major contributory factors accelerating the underlying environmental risks of mega proportions.
Brick kilns were named inimical to a healthy environment for its charcoal furnaces. Firewood prices hiked with shrinking forests and were gradually replaced by cheaper motor vehicle tires that burn for longer. The unabated use of rubber tires in brick kilns is one of the leading factors in spreading cancerous carbon fumes present in the atmosphere.
In the wintery cold it all condensed into a mix of dust, burned rubber fumes, and solid micro-carbon particles emitted by motor vehicles, particularly when engines rave in a stationary position. It aggravates with stubble burning in the post-harvest farm fire along both sides of the Indo-Pakistan border, the most convenient customary practice to discard the farm waste of rice and sugarcane. At the micro level, the burning of plastic-containing trash in the streets emitted cancerous fumes. This practice is rampant across Pakistan despite being a punishable crime in the near absence of proper solid waste management even in major urban centres.
In a situation where meek environmentalists and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), the profiteering construction industry, and busy bee politicians, all with an axe to grind, are gaining political mileage out of the smog, which is intensifying every passing winter. They are mostly up and active from September through January with quick-fix optics and then files are left to eat dust the rest of the year.
A few years ago, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) government (2018-21), displayed significant political optics championing environmentalism including the controversial tree tsunami and ban on plastic shopping bags. In league, the state-run Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV) started an initiative to debate the environmental issues, activism, and practices, in order to introduce transparency. As a panelist, I have exposed the media coverage frequency on environmental issues, frauds in the reforestation drive, and the plastic-ban fiasco as well as suggested remedial measures but the concerned authorities could not face their look in the mirror. Probably, it was beyond the expectations of concerned quarters that so much truth would come out instead of the desired appeasing of projected fancy statistics. Consequently, after only two programmes, the then-Environment Minister Zartaj Gul, known for her Covid-19 kind of slip of the tongue, ordered the initiative shut. The third and final programme was a monologue with a concerned official only presenting an official version justifying their existence.
Whereas her successor, the sophisticated and seasoned Climate Change Minister Senator Sherry Rahman, could not fare beyond bringing home the leadership takeaway of climate change politics from the Conference of the Parties (COP-27) in November 2022. She seems to have succumbed to the inherent dishonesty of the crafty red-tape system, their rampant corruption, and the dilemma of implementation of regulatory frameworks. The subsequent annual sessions of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and most recently COP-29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, this month might hold the best remedies but would remain futile, as it did in the past, mainly because the regulatory frameworks are recommendatory without legal binding upon the sovereign member states to implement.
At the end of the day what matters is the actual work done. No matter who governs the provinces and what government is in the center
Of course, in terms of providing the platform, raising concerns, and outlining the recommendations, the COP is doing a great job but the onus of failing to translate the proceeds of the Conference into effective practical measures on the ground is on the sovereign state members and how seriously they take it in practice!
According to the Swiss environment watchdog IQAir’s live assessment on November 21, 2024, the Air Quality Index (AQI) was 259 in Lahore while the main pollutants stand at PM2.5 or 184 ug/cubic meter which is 36.8 times the World Health Organisation (WHO) Annual Air Quality Guideline Value (AQGV). It is followed by Peshawar with AQI 257 with a similar ratio of air pollutants.
Despite whatever endangered green that Islamabad is left with, it also remains unhealthy with AQI 183 and PM2.5 at 100.8 ug/cb and 20.2 times higher than the WHO AQGV. This “very unhealthy” air quality and air pollution by the accepted international standards would remain prevalent through November and beyond in Lahore, Multan, Lodhran, Rojhan, Rawalpindi, Mangla, and Sialkot, Faisalabad, Pindi Bhatian, Peshawar and adjoining areas.
The 33 million marooned flood victims of 2022, which submerged a third of Pakistan, largely remain displaced and awaiting relief; the rapidly widening holes in our escalating environment and climate emergencies badly require practical measures on the ground while Babus in bureaucracy keep pushing paper and politicians are after the leadership role at international platforms pocketing political mileage.
Whether taking the citadel of global climate change leadership or scoring points in projected expectations from the initiatives showcased internationally, at the end of the day what matters is the actual work done. No matter who governs the provinces and what government is in the center, all the mainstream political parties including PTI, Pakistan Muslim League/Nawaz (PML/N), Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP), and allied associates, the complicating governance issues generally remain unaddressed, undeterred and stand tall mushrooming under the lurking dearth of political will to implement.